NYC-based Language cue up some speedball revolver riffs with a highbrow twist. While their tunes often channel old school punk vibes while their tight narratives are imbued with scholarly insight into world history and socio-political functions.

Language‘s Charles Sloan (bass, vox) shares, “I started with of a couple ideas: a middle school project where I had to decide what I would take with me on a spaceship to a new world, and the story of Aeneas, one of the mythical founders of Rome, who took his father, statues of his gods, and his son and lead them out of a burning Troy. It’s all reduced to a few shouted phrases, which is where the desperation and irrationality enter.”

Sun Kin is alt-pop music by Kabir Kumar, a Bombay-born, Indian-Canadian, Oakland-based musician.

Today, Kumar is sharing his latest single, “Honey, I’m Whole,” and shares, “This song is about wishing that someone you’ve loved forever could meet someone you just fell in love with. I thought that I’d always be able to send my Nani an email, asking for her shami kebab recipe. To visit her, every precious couple of years, and stand eagerly over her shoulder sniffing the bubbling rajma. Or sit in her protective wingspan in the auto, clattering over to the local mithai wallah for some diamond-shaped kaju barfis. I wish I could hear it from her lips, how early in the morning you need to wake up to simmer a love worth remembering.

Straight talk: I’m a pretty anxious person. As I fear many young professionals can attest to, we live in a pretty stressful environment. Technology has totally changed the traditional way of living: constant access to email on your phone may unofficially encourage working around the clock, social media has enabled whole new levels of FOMO, and the average American thinks of their phone every eight minutes. Eight minutes! I could keep going, but you know all of this stuff, and you probably feel it too.

In an effort to deal with the anxiety this creates for me, and as I noted in my last Straight Talk Sunday, I’ve spent a lot of 2018 focusing on investing in myself.

One of my favorite days of the year is January 1st because you’re encouraged to sit down and think about what you want to focus on in the upcoming year and set goals accordingly. I love carving out the time to figure out what I want to get better at, think about what gives me energy, and find a way to hold myself accountable to doing those things.

All that said, the problem I’ve found with setting new years resolutions on January 1st is that they rarely last throughout the year. I also fundamentally disagree with the fact that one should only consider what their resolutions should be once a year. So I’ve switched my focus from annual resolutions into monthly resolutions.

The theme of my resolutions is almost always to better myself. Note: while I’m currently working on boosting my confidence and reminding myself daily that I’m a badass who’s doing a great job at this whole life thing, I also think it’s worth recognizing that there are always ways to keep improving. For example, I think I’m doing really well at work, but I know that I’m terrible at setting boundaries, taking breaks, and managing the high-stress environment that comes with a career in sales. So what happens if I hold myself to goals and activities to get better at each of these things?

For me, that led to three goals I want to focus on this year:

Get better at managing stress and anxiety

Make time for things that give me (and others!) joy

Develop skills that I am passionate about

Having defined those, I set monthly intentions that aim to fulfill each of these. Here’s what I’ve done so far :

January: Meditate 5 times a week. Meditation is a way to achieve relaxation and stress reduction by focusing your attention and eliminating a constant stream of thoughts and worries that may be causing unnecessary stress. I’ve found this to be a really effective way to control the voice in my head and become more aware of the present moment.

February: Read before bed 5 times a week. Similar to meditation in some forms, I find reading to be relaxing, educational, and a great way to focus on a different narrative than a constant stream of thoughts and worries

March: Run 50 miles. In the past year or so, I’ve gotten really into running. Not only is it another way of managing stress, it’s a way for me to get outside and see the beautiful city I live in. 50 miles was a relatively arbitrary number that seemed stretchy but achievable and would set me up to be in good enough shape to run a half marathon at a decent pace in early April

April: Write 5 handwritten letters. I’ve grown up in a family that appreciates snail-mail. I still receive letters and postcards from my mom, who grew up receiving letters from her father when she moved away from home. The joy I get from receiving a handwritten letter is something I hope to always be able to experience, and I hope by putting time into this, others get to experience a similar joy

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Future months are not planned out yet, but given I have set principles and themes that they’ll tie to, setting the intentions is relatively easy and fun.

As I look back on each of these months’ intentions, they’ve each helped me manage stress, bring me joy, and develop skills that I consider to be worth investing in. And because of that, I find myself carrying these things over into future months as much as possible. It’s April, and I still try to wake up and meditate on most days of the week, I read before bed almost every night, and running is a part of every week for me. These are things I truly enjoy, making them much more than just “one and done” activities.

The reason I share all of this is because I truly believe I’m not alone in finding being an adult in today’s world to be fun, but also really stressful. I have a great job, am surrounded by wonderful, smart and successful friends, and live in a fantastic apartment, but I’d be lying if I said I feel like I have it all figured out. I often question whether I’m on the right path, if I’m in the right place, etc. I don’t envision myself finding out the answers to those questions overnight, so I’m incredibly intentional about taking baby steps to manage stress and invest in things that give me energy. It’s on me to figure out what those things are, set intentions to do them, and to hold myself accountable. And the best way I’ve found to do that is in this process of monthly resolutions or intentions.

I hope this is helpful if you find any of these feelings to be familiar. I’d encourage you to join me on this monthly journey and share with me what you’re working on. If it helps as a starting point, here are three quick recommendations:

If you want to start exercising more frequently, I’ve copied a cardio playlist I created and continue to update. I also recommend testing out podcasts while exercising; that was a game-changer for me. Some good ones to start with are How I Built This, 30 for 30 Podcasts, and The Moth.

Thanks for reading, and leave me a note or send me a tweet me @sunsetrearview if you do or are interested in doing something similar! Would love to hear your goals or intentions!

Due to some technical issues on our end, we were not able to provide you the first two months to kick of 2018. Have no fear! We’ve returned with Best of March. First playlist is the current month, and second playlist is an accumulation of prior months.

Outside Lands is bringing it back to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this summer, boasting an incredible lineup with The Weeknd, Florence + The Machine and Janet Jackson topping the bill. This makes for one of many headlining stops this summer for both The Weeknd and Jackson.

If for some reason the headliners aren’t cutting it for you, don’t worry. The co-headliners and supporting acts encompass a massive amount of talent across all genres. Future, Beck, Odesza, Bon Iver and DJ Snake will co-headline, while N.E.R.D, Jamie xx and Daniel Caesar, among many others round out the bill.